chapterssectioning
I've seen these very nice dicussion about fancy chapters:
Fancy chapter headings
It seems that the packages are now called PhD
https://github.com/yannisl/phd
I can't find any documentation about it. Did somebody managed to use it (I hope so for the creator 🙂 of the package)? If it's the case could show me a simple working example?
Although the memoir class, fancychap, titlesec and others have some predefined chapter styles, I understand your search for something better.
There are two issues to consider here:
One of the difficulties in the redefinition of chapters, is the different mechanisms provided by the various packages as well as by LaTeX. To complicate matters further the code in the book.cls is spread in at least four chunks.
An approach to overcome the limitations and provide some more general and well abstracted routines to define a key-value approach similar to those provided by PGF keys. I have done some work in this respect sometimes back and a typical setting would be:
\cxset{
name=\so{CHAPTER},
numbering=arabic,
number font-size=\large,
number before={},
number position=rightname,
chapter color={black!80},
chapter font-size=\large,
chapter before=\rule[3pt]{\textwidth}{0.4pt}\par\hfill,
number after=,
chapter after=\hfill\hfill\par\rule[6pt]{\textwidth}{0.4pt}\par,
number color=\color{black!80},
title font-family=\bfseries,
title font-color=\color{black!80},
title font-weight=,
title font-size=\LARGE,
title beforeskip=\hfill\par\hspace*{0pt},
header style=empty
}
Although the keys and the code might at first glance seem overwhelming it can be greatly simplified by the use of styles. So once a set of keys has been defined it can be stored in a .style command. Another advantage of this method is that community settings can easily be incorporated by the use of libraries. This is important for TikZ based designs, where the shapes and complexity cannot be abstracted easily if at all.
This brings us to the second part of the issues associated with chapter re-definitions: typography. The chapter look and feel must blend with the rest of the design. Consider for example the following two images:
It is no good only having definitions for chapters. The style should extend to exercises, tables, sections table of contents and the like. A similar method to using a key-value approach might make this task easier and share the styling among the community. Originally I experimented with .ini files and LuaLaTeX for loading them. However, the key value approach is better and more familiar to the community.
I have collected over 50 styles from different books and I have the basic code ready for experimentation (only for chapters).
And now the coding part. First we define keys for all major elements:
\def\cxset{\pgfqkeys{/chapter}}
\cxset{%
name/.code={\gdef\chaptername{#1}},
chapter font-family/.store in=\chapterfontfamily@cx,
...
}
As we want to use the basic LaTeX structure and conventions, we redefine the
\@makechapterhead to handle the keys. Remember that there are two commands used by LaTeX to typeset chapter heads. The one is used for the unstarred version of the command, while the other one is for the starred version. The starred version of the command in our approach is unnecessary as we can define a key instruct the typesetting engine to ignore the numbering (numbering=none) and hence we redirect both the starred as well as the unstarred version to the same macro.
\renewcommand\@makechapterhead[2][]{%
...
\titlebeforeskip@cx%
\if@lefttitle%
\beforenumber@cx%
\counterdisplay\c@chapter\afternumber@cx%
\fi
...
}
The macro contains the typesetting algorithm and hooks into the various keys. To typeset a chapter head the simplest approach is to define a set of keys as styles. For example we can use:
\cxset{manet/.style={
name={},
numbering=none,
...
}
to define the style "manet". The chapter is then typeset as:
\cxset{manet}
\chapter{EDOUARD MANET}
\begin{multicols}{3}
\leftskip0pt
\lettrine{I}{psum dolor} sit amet latixeus. \lipsum*[1-2]
Latinicus porcupinus to fill the line.
\end{multicols}
Giving us the following result:
With slight variations, we can inherit the style and get the "cardinal on a vespa chapter":
\cxset{manet}
\topimage{<image file>}
\chapter{ALAN MacDONALD}
Additional keys can be defined if necessary to cater for all fields.
Chapters made out of only textual components are easier to define. You just set the style number.
\cxset{style7}
\chapter{Introduction to Style Seven}
...
\cxset{style12}
\chapter{Introduction to Style Twelve}
...
Special chapter openings need a different treatment and are best described as environments, as they tend to have many textual components as well as images:
\begin{specialchapter}[
image=genetics-dogs,%chromosomes
image caption={Labrador retriever\\
...
by two gene pairs.}]%
{Extensions\\ of Mendelian\\ Genetics}
\begin{itemize}
...
\end{itemize}
\end{specialchapter}
The second image above had only the image key changed, just to illustrate the technique. As a point of interest the images were placed with traditional boxing techniques rather than using tikZ or picture commands. The shading was achieved by stretching a "shadow" image file, pretty much like it was used on the web in the pre-html5 days.
The technique has proved useful, easy to define and although the documentation still needs to be developed and the code needs a good clean-up and a few must-do; in the meantime you can download the image samples (used in the documentation), the chapterx package file, the documentation tex file and the documentation pdf file.
Please ping me at chat, if you have any other interesting designs that we can add to the collection.
As switching between twocolumn and onecolumn causes a page break, one may use the multicol package and its multicols environment instead. (The environment's optional argument is used for introductory one-column material.) In the following example, I use the twocolumn class option to achieve smaller margins, then temporarily switch two \onecolumn at the start of the document. Page breaks before chapters are removed by disabling \clearpage inside a group.
Note: The vertical space before chapter 1 (typeset with multicols) is actually larger than the space before chapter 3 (typeset with \twocolumn). The larger space is caused by LaTeX bug 3126 (\twocolumn interfering with \topskip); for consistent spacing, use multicols environments for every chapter of your document. EDIT: Even better, use Frank Mittelbachs answer to Is it possible to define a `multicols{2}` preamble switch that works for \chapter?
\documentclass[twocolumn]{book}
\usepackage{multicol}
\setlength{\columnsep}{20pt}
\newcommand*{\sometext}{Hello, here is some text without a meaning. This
text should show, how a printed text will look like at this place.
If you read this text, you will get no information.}
\begin{document}
\onecolumn
\begingroup
\let\clearpage\relax
\begin{multicols}{2}[%
\chapter{First (and some text to fill the line)}%
]
\sometext
\end{multicols}
\begin{multicols}{2}[%
\chapter{Second (and some text to fill the line)}%
]
\sometext
\end{multicols}
\endgroup
\twocolumn
\chapter{Third (and some text to fill the line)}
\sometext
\chapter{Fourth (and some text to fill the line)}
\sometext
\end{document}
Best Answer
As the comments note, I am the only user at the moment and would probably be for some time. Like many package writers the real reason for developing it, was to fulfill a need, in this case to enable me to produce beautiful books with less problems. A full
pdfprobably 3-4 months old can be found at phd. It is a rather lengthy document, as the document at present is being used as a test document. I am actively adding material to it, but is really still not production ready.The package, which I intend to offer it both as a class as well as a package, has two aims the first is to act as a package manager resolving conflicts and loading a number of popular as well as obscure but useful packages in order to avoid common pain points of
LaTeX2eusage. The current version loads approximately 70-80 packages (still buggy) but is capable of typesetting the Comprehensive List of Symbols, including the index. I have a version (not at github) at the moment that runs happily both inLaTeX2eandXeLaTeXand to a limited extend with LuaTeX.The second aim is to offer a new style of
LaTeXtypesetting. The user will have to only load the package or the class and type:The
templatesorstylesfollow a somewhatCSStype of programming, but in reality they are all keys (using pgf). With the intention to get rid of any macros in the styling or at least to minimize it.The main command is intended to be
\cxset. The intention is if you need to do any customization most of the keys have self-explanatory names and the styles are just text files.The package at the moment, has keys for sectioning styling, document font management and hopefully soon language management. The test document at present is about 800 pages and is intended to be a free and comprehensive ebook on all things
TeXand family. The real user manual will be about 5-10 pages, as the intention is to ease usage.If the hyperref did not redefine almost the full breadth of LaTeX2e commands and Knuth allowed a few more maths alphabets, I would have finished six months ago. My aim is to get the package to CTAN when I am done with language management. Possibly towards the end of the year. I am also hoping to come up with a method to speed up compilation (currently takes 4-5 minutes to compile 800 pages) without compromising on the main aims of the package.
I shortened the name to conserve keystrokes! I am not too sure if this will be the final name.